Nigeria: New Year - Tinubu Says Security Situation Improved Despite Repeated Attacks allafrica.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from allafrica.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
It was 10.30pm
when sporadic gunshots started ringing out in the sky over the village of Kankara in Katsina, northern Nigeria.
Farmer Garba Abubakar was with his wife and six of his 15 children, who were still awake when the shooting started.
By morning, Mr Abubaker, and scores of parents like him, were beside themselves with grief: his son Jafar, 14, who was staying at the nearby boarding school, had been kidnapped, almost certainly by Boko Haram, one of the most violent ISIS-linked groups in the world.
Three hundred and thirty three other children are still missing.
As dawn came, Mr Abubaker and other parents thronged anxiously to the schoolyard after hearing about the abduction, and later provided the school management with names, photos and other information that could help in the search of the missing school boys.